Folding Angle Regulation by Curved Crease Design for Self-Assembling Origami Propellers

Abstract

© 2015 by ASME. This paper describes a method for manufacturing complex three-dimensional curved structures by self-folding layered materials. Our main focus is to first show that the material can cope with curved crease self-folding and then to utilize the curvature to predict the folding angles. The self-folding process employs uniform heat to induce selffolding of the material and shows the successful generation of several types of propellers as a proof of concept. We further show the resulting device is functional by demonstrating its levitation in the presence of a magnetic field applied remotely.